Keywords
Citation
(1999), "SSTC. Full house at spring meeting of SSTC held at NPL", Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Vol. 11 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ssmt.1999.21911cab.018
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 1999, MCB UP Limited
SSTC. Full house at spring meeting of SSTC held at NPL
SSTC
Full house at spring meeting of SSTC held at NPL
Keywords SSTC, NPL
On 22 April National Physical Laboratory hosted the Spring meeting of the Soldering & Science Technology Club with a line up of nine technical papers, followed by a brief overview of the new three year NPL Research Programme.
Milos Dusek, research scientist at NPL, opened the day with a paper on reliability which looked at the optimum pad design and solder joint shape. He was followed by Joy Warde from Cambridge University, with a linked study predicting reliability by modelling failure in solder joints.
NPL has worked closely with ESA to look at the cleaning properties of rosin fluxes concentrating on simple hand cleaning procedures. One of the conclusions is that cleaning within 24 hours of assembly should be mandatory.
NPL's Ling Zou presented her study testing flux residues using the surface insulation resistance technique. She claims that the big advantage of the SIR measurement is that it can be used to detect localised contamination on the board, as opposed to contamination testing.
Simon Green has conducted experiments at NPL, looking at the effect of varying conditions on reworking solder joints, especially with regard to the change in the intermetallic.
Two papers followed, on the subject of stencil printing, an overview by Chris Hunt, followed by results of practical trials conducted at Matra Bae.
Martin Wickham detailed his work, enthusiastically, on automatic optical inspection of surface mount solder joints, where both equipment and components were evaluated.
Lead free soldering is a hot topic. NPL co-wrote the DTI commissioned report, from which one of the participants, Carl Levoguer, presented an overview of the current position.
Chris Hunt then rounded off the day announcing the new three year programme starting April 1999 to March 2002. Projects will include: conductive adhesives, lead free solders, rheology, stencil printing, dispensing and tack measurement.